at, or
reclined on cots, the supplicants who still tarried though the Patriarch
had gone. And now one came reverently out of the cottage door from that
room that was never closed; now another went in--and still another.

Madison smiled suddenly, broadly, with immense satisfaction and
contentment--and then his eyes fixed quite as suddenly on the
single-seated buggy that was coming toward him on the driveway across
the lawn. That was Mamie Rodgers driving--and that was Helena beside
her.

Madison recalled instantly the object of his visit--and instantly he
whistled a rather surprised little whistle under his breath. How
alluringly Helena's brown hair coiled in wavy wealth upon her head;
there wasn't any need of rouge for color in the oval face; the dark eyes
were soft and deep and glorious; and she sat there in a little white
muslin frock as dainty as a medallion from a master's brush.

"Say," said Madison to himself, "say, I never quite got it before. Say,
she's--she's lovely--and that's my Helena. It's no wonder
Thornton stared at her that day we touched him for the fifty,
and"--suddenly--"damn Thornton!"

But the buggy was beside him now, and he lifted his hat as Mamie Rodgers
pulled up the horse.

"Good afternoon, Miss Rodgers," he said. "Good afternoon, Miss Vail--how
is the Patriarch to-day?"

"He is very well, thank you," Helena answered--and being custodian of
the whip brushed a fly off the horse's flank.

"I was just coming out to pay you a little visit," remarked Madison,
trying to catch her eye.

"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry!" said Helena sweetly, still busy with the fly.
"Mamie is going to take me for a drive--and afterwards we are going to
her house for tea."

"Oh!" said Madison, a little blankly.

Helena smiled at him, nodded, and touched the horse with the whip--and
then she leaned suddenly out toward him, as the buggy started forward.

"Oh, Mr. Madison," she called, "I forgot to tell you! I had a letter
from Mr. Thornton to-day--and he's coming back to-morrow."

--XVII--

IN WHICH HELENA TAKES A RIDE

The wind kissed Helena's face, bringing dainty color to her cheeks,
tossing truant wisps of hair this way and that, as the car swept onward.
But she sat strangely silent now beside Thornton at the steering wheel.

It seemed to her that she was living, not her own life, not life as she
had known and looked upon it in the years before, but living, as it
were, in a strange, suspended state tha